The Return of the Duke - Grace Callaway Page 0,103

instant, she was moving through the air. She found herself no longer on his lap, but on her hands and knees facing the other direction. Before she could make sense of what had happened, he thrust into her from behind, with a force that shoved a surprised cry from her throat.

She tried to look at him, but he planted his palm on the middle of her back, pressing her down against the mattress. With his other hand, he held her bottom high for his pounding. She felt his urgency and dark need as he slaked his lust upon her, as he tupped her wordlessly.

Without returning her declaration of love.

Pain and pleasure knifed her chest. Eyes stinging, she fought against her rising orgasm, but he shoved his hand around her hip, his knowing fingers searching out the heart of her desire. He rubbed the throbbing bud, and a humiliating climax broke. She came and came, and he groaned, his hips pummeling her bottom with even greater power. His fingers held her hips in a bruising grip as he filled her with his copious heat.

For long moments, neither of them moved. His harsh breaths filtered through the pounding in her ears. He withdrew, and the wet rush that leaked down her leg jolted her out of paralysis. She scurried off the bed, yanking the negligee he hadn’t bothered to remove into place. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, his chest damp and heaving, his cock still hard and glistening, Knight looked at her—and the shield in his eyes chilled her to the core.

“I think…I think I’ll sleep in my own room,” she said through serrated breaths.

He’d never looked more foreboding, his expression starker.

“Perhaps that is a good idea,” he said in a low voice.

She exited his room as quickly as she could without running. Once she reached the safety of her own bedchamber, she closed the door and locked it. Only then did she allow the shocked tears to fall.

33

“Francesca is doing tolerably well,” Aunt Esther said. “Better than to be expected.”

Severin’s aunt was the master of understatement. They were at Princess Adelaide’s glittering soiree the following evening, and Severin watched Fancy smile as she chatted with a ring of admirers. The Duchess of Knighton was a smashing success, and it was easy to see why.

Fancy looked captivating in an ivory silk gown that bared her shoulders and showed off her nipped-in waist. Embroidered flowers were scattered over the tulle overskirt of her gown and on the tiny puffed sleeves. To complete her transformation into a faerie queen, her hair had been fashioned into a lustrous coronet studded with golden pins shaped like bumblebees.

Yet it was more than Fancy’s physical charms that drew admirers buzzing to her side. She radiated a genuine warmth that, evidently, even the jaded ton couldn’t resist. Her beauty was tempered by the vulnerability in her doe-brown eyes; when she accepted an offer to dance, she always seemed surprised, as if she didn’t expect or take her popularity for granted.

Severin watched on with pride, even as a vise of guilt clamped around his chest. He had behaved despicably toward her last night. He’d been in a dangerous mood since the Anna Smith business, which was why he’d avoided Fancy: he didn’t want to be around her when he was not entirely in control of himself.

Yet when she’d opened the door last night, his good intentions had gone out the window. He hadn’t been able to resist her sweet initiative, the feminine yearning in her eyes. No woman had ever given herself to him so freely. He’d taken advantage of her generosity, losing himself in her sweetness, in the marital heat that set his loins afire.

Then she had whispered words of love and he had…panicked. There was no other way to describe his reaction. The door had blown off the cage inside him: pain, fear, and need escaping in a dark charge. Caught in the mayhem, he had acted like a goddamned animal.

He’d fucked Fancy. There was no other word for it. No excuses for his conduct.

Although he knew he hadn’t hurt her physically, he had done damage in other ways. He saw it in the way she had avoided his gaze since then. Even now she wouldn’t look at him.

Shame and wordless terror twisted his gut.

“Knighton, what is the matter?” his aunt asked. “You do not seem yourself.”

He wasn’t himself. He didn’t know who the bloody hell he was—and that was the problem. Fancy stirred the chaos